Returned a couple days back from Beirut. It seems like a nice city. There are still a few signs of the civil war and a very impressive monument at the Army GHQ where many if not all of the old militias contributed artillery and tanks for a huge memorial where they are embedded in cement and piled on top of each other. This is a... Read More

Saw today the Army's official history of the Wanat disaster--nine killed in July 08. It was C company 2nd Battalion 503rd Infantry. The same battalion I was with in Baylough. I don't recall which company that platoon was from. The sergeant who got the Medal of Honor today was from B Company and was there in Zabul then too in 05. Anyway, I... Read More

Strange, or maybe only undeservedly surprising, how brief coincidental alignment of the normally unrelated can bring new unanticipated ( unwelcome?) tangential enlightenment to the past. Yesterday dipping into Vollmann Rising Up and Rising Down and then this morning listening to The Battle of Evermore really paying attention to the lyrics for the first time. Together bring back vague shades of Deh Chopan in 2005--a new context... Read More

One of the few benefits of Kuwait is that the USO shows always make it here. About half never make it to Afghanistan because of weather and flight problems, and most of those never to get to small bases.

So, the exercise is over. Finally. Interesting at some levels. Quite a departure from the first events of this sort I did a long time ago when we were "playing" the defense of northeastern Bavaria against the Czech and Soviet armies as they would try to come in south of Hof. My little corner of that scenario started out as a large wooded hill on... Read More

Part of a big HQ exercise here. There is nothing more obsequious than a senior field grade officer in the presence of a general officer, and no creature on Earth more impressed with his own voice and genius than said general. Amazing to behold. Fifteen hour days playing war. Makes me wish I were back in a real one.

Back again...no longer in Afghanistan, though I wish I were. Working out of Kuwait covering Central Asia. Hope to be in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan soon. Probably be working with the Lebanese mil soon too trying to find ways to help them startv to pry the south from Hezbollah. Cool work, but not Afghanistan. A bit of me will always be there. Unfortunately it is... Read More

For some reason today I suddenly remembered Srebrenica. I spent a lot of time there in 2001. It is really a beautiful valley. The hills though were full of abandoned and destroyed Muslim villages. The factory where the unlucky Dutch Battalion had been contained a sawmill where a drunken Serb, late of Sarajevo but at that time maintaining his... Read More

I was never a real believer. Even as a child religion never had much of a grip on me.

I remember sitting in an outdoor mass in northern Wisconsin at about age nine or ten when the priest was reading part of the Gospel where Jesus referred to those who had lukewarm faith. I was thinking to myself that I was kind of lukewarm and... Read More

Excellent meeting today with some members of the Afghanistan Pashai shura--a kind of Afghan standing assembly. They represent a relatively small ethnic group that is spread across five main areas in the North East (Kapisa, Laghman, Kunar, Nuristan, and Jalabad). They are an interesting group that split from the Nuristani when they converted to Islam. The Nuristani remained kafir until they were forced to become... Read More